The Royal Commission "On the Practice of subjecting Live Animals to Experiments for Scientific Purposes," was appointed on 22nd June 1875. Its members were--Lord Cardwell (chairman), Lord Winmarleigh, Mr. W. E. Forster, Sir John Karslake, Mr. Huxley, Mr. (Sir John) Erichsen, and Mr. Hutton. Between 5th July and 30th December, 53 witnesses were examined, and 6551 questions were put and answered. The report of the Commission bears date 8th January 1876, and in that year the present Act received the Royal Assent. The evidence before the Commission was all, or nearly all, concerned with physiology, with the work of Magendie, Claude Bernard, and Sir Charles Bell, the action of curare, the _Handbook of the Physiological Laboratory_, the teaching of physiology, and so forth. Very little was said of pathology; and of bacteriology next to nothing. Practically, physiology alone came before the Commissioners; and such experiments in physiology as are now, the youngest of them, more than thirty years old. Bacteriology, at the time of the passing of the Act, had hardly made a beginning. Therefore the Act made no special provision for inoculations, injections, and the whole study of immunisation of animals and men against disease. Experiments of this kind have to be scheduled under one of the existing certificates, to bring them under an Act that was drafted without foreknowledge of them. Certificate A or Certificate B has to be used for this purpose:-- _Certificate A._ "We hereby certify that, in our opinion, insensibility in the animal on which any such experiment may be performed cannot be produced by anæsthetics without necessarily frustrating the object of such experiment." _Certificate B._ "We hereby certify that, in our opinion, the killing of the animal on which any such experiment is performed before it recovers from the influence of the anæsthetic administered to it, would necessarily frustrate the object of such experiment." Under one or other of these certificates must be scheduled all inoculations, injections, feeding-experiments, transplantations of particles of disease, immunisations, and the like. They must be scheduled somehow; and that is the only way of doing it. Where the act of inducing the disease would itself give any pain, if an anæsthetic were not administered--as in the subdural inoculation of a rabbit, or the intra-peritoneal inoculation of an animal with a particle of cancerous tissue--there the licensee must hold, together with the license, Certificate B, because the act of inducing the disease is itself an operation, done under an anæsthetic. If the animal be a dog or a cat, he must hold Certificates B and EE; if it be a horse, ass, or mule, Certificates B and F.